Guiding downtown shopping into the future

Background: It has been a common perception in the media in recent years that external shopping malls extinguish the trade in Swedish downtown areas. Factors that promote external shopping malls are that customers become more and more indolent and more people buy cars. Despite this fact, downtown areas have a great deal to offer when it comes to creating a pleasant atmosphere. Furthermore, customers are becoming more demanding and want something extra while doing their shopping. More and more shopkeepers therefore realize the importance of events as an instrument to offer experiences to the customers. Purpose: To investigate whether shopkeepers in downtown Linköping consider the external shopping mall in Tornby a competitor or not and, if so, in what ways the trade in the downtown area has been affected by Tornby. Furthermore we will outline and describewhat types of marketing shopkeepers in downtown Linköping use today, and in what ways these types are being utilized. Because this is investigated from the point of view of the shopkeepers in downtown Linköping, this study will also bring forward a few words of advice to them. These pieces of advice are focused on how they should compose their marketing efforts in order to handle the competition with the external shopping malls. Some of the recommendations are also meant to guide other participants in Linköping’s retail trade. In doing so, we will be investigating the aptness in using event marketing and, if we find it suitable, in what ways it should be used. The results from this investigation will be Delimitations: This investigation has been empirically delimited to mainly encompass the situation in Linköping’s municipality. A practical delimitation that has been made is that we only have interviewed one representative from each mall in downtown Linköping. The individual shopkeepers have therefore not been discussed. As to the theoretical frame of reference, it consists in large parts of theories concerning event marketing. However, we will not be discussing companies’ internal events, with a view to motivating and creating a pleasant atmosphere among the staff. Nor will we be discussing sponsorship which is existing events sponsored by companies. Realization: This study is a qualitative one. The empirical data originates from ten interviews with representatives of Linköping’s municipality, Svensk Handel, Cityföreningen of Linköping and the persons in charge of the shopping malls in downtown Linköping. One interview has directed us to the next, which has helped us to select appropriate persons to enquire about the situation in Linköping. Since we have interviewed all the people in charge of the malls in downtown Linköping, the entire population has been studied. Apart from the interviews, the empirical data also comes from research reports, investigations and literature on the subject. Results: The shopkeepers in the downtown area of Linköping do not consider the external shopping malls in Tornby a competitor but more of a complement to the trade at large in the city. The downtown area has so much to offer which the external shopping malls cannot, such as culture, parks, churches, coffee shops and so forth. Our view is that without the competition from external shopping malls, the trade in the downtown areas would not have changed as much. How the trade is perceived depends on the perspective chosen. Therefore we believe that all the organisations involved in the trade must work together to promote the uniqueness of Linköping in order to convince people from other cities to make a visit here. The malls in Linköping’s downtown area differ to a great extent when it comes to marketing. They are using different types of marketing in different manners. We have found it important to make sure that all these types are coordinated to convey th